Recapturing a Killer Flu Virus.

This article focuses on Asian flu. Last September, Meridian Bioscience Inc., a medical company, began sending out more than 3,700 virus-test kits to labs throughout the United States and 18 other countries, all part of a routine quality-assurance program to ensure that such facilities are accurately identifying biological agents. The problem is that the kits included a deadly flu strain that had killed more than 1 million people in the 1957 Asian flu pandemic. The company's lapse raised the alarming prospect of a new epidemic. The kits reached such terrorist havens as Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.